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On Friday, the Anchorage Police Department confirmed 19-year-old Kelly Hunt of Shaktoolik was found dead after going missing in January.
While she was unaccounted for, two advocates who say the authorities weren’t doing enough ran their own investigation and worked to keep Hunt’s story in the public eye.
The hours before Hunt’s body was discovered
A group of about 100 people gathered around a small tree on the park strip in Anchorage for an annual remembrance ceremony on a rainy Monday afternoon.
“We will now begin the ribbon hanging portion of our ceremony,” Suki Miller, executive director of Victims for Justice, the organization hosting the event, said. “As each ribbon is placed, we honor the lives affected by these crimes and reaffirm our commitment to those who continue to carry their stories.”
Orange was for victims of assault. Blue was for victims of sex trafficking. Red, white, and blue were for crimes against law enforcement. Black was for victims of homicide.
Missing and Murdered Indigenous People advocate Antonia Commack stepped up and hung a black ribbon among the now colorfully decorated branches. Her group carried posterboards displaying three dozen missing and suspicious death bulletins.
She had yet to add one for 19-year-old Kelly Hunt. Commack spent more than three months investigating her disappearance from Anchorage in January.
Commack didn’t know that Hunt's body was found dead just a few hours before.
The morning Hunt dissapeared
Kelly Hunt graduated from high school in Shaktoolik in 2025. She played basketball, liked to dance on TikTok, and was a freshman at Alaska Christian College in Soldotna.
The community of Shaktoolik held a fundraiser to bring her home for the holidays. After break, she was in Anchorage, headed back to school, when she went missing.
Around 6 a.m. on Jan. 7, Hunt left a friend's house where she was staying and never came back.
The Anchorage Police Department says Hunt’s family reported her missing four days later, the day before classes started for the spring semester. The family called Commack that day, too.
“I was immediately worried, because her brother told me she left all of her belongings at that house, all of her clothes,” Commack said, adding that she drove into Anchorage to begin looking that same day. “What concerned me the most was that there was a large amount of money in her purse. Why would she leave all that money? So I was like, OK, something's wrong here.”
Commack works with Missing and Murdered Indigenous People cases in her day job, but says her search and advocacy is done on her own time. Her personal Facebook page includes 50 missing, murdered, or suspicious death bulletins, including Hunt's, that she advocates for.
Commack said she posted flyers in the Anchorage neighborhood where Hunt was last seen, and spoke with friends and other connections. After about a week, she says the trail went cold and public attention faded.
Later, fellow MMIP advocate Alexis Savage got involved. Savage lives outside of Anchorage and is a full-time mother to four daughters.
“I could feel the community forgetting. And so I made a posting,” Savage said, “If I don't, people will forget.”
Savage got into advocacy four years ago because of a death in her family. Her cousin, Fred Lee, was found dead in Anchorage in 2022. Police ruled Lee’s death non-criminal, though family and advocates disagreed. Savage said she and Commack became friends while advocating for Lee’s case, and that she applied what she learned during Lee’s case to Hunt's.
“I kind of knew that what needed to happen was something big where all the attention is on Kelly,” Savage said. “It just wouldn't leave my mind. You know, I was like, ‘OK, I know I'm busy, but let's just get this done. Let's just do it.’ “
On the statewide stage
In March, Shaktoolik’s boys and girls basketball teams played in the state championship tournament in Anchorage. Savage and others joined together to chant “Bring Kelly Home” as they waved 145 posters with a photo of Hunt in her high school basketball jersey.
After that, Savage said she took on the case full-time.
The last known people to see Hunt alive were her friends in the house where she was staying in Anchorage. They couldn't be reached for an interview with KNOM, but Savage and Commack said they interviewed them multiple times.
“[Hunt’s friend] told me she was picked up that morning by somebody that was selling alcohol, and she called him a bootlegger, and that they were going to that person,” Commack said.
“And then I interviewed her further,” Savage added. “In the beginning, Kelly told her that she was going out to the street to have a few shots with a friend. And then Kelly also showed her a Snapchat message from the person that picked her up, showing her a bottle of whiskey.”
Savage and Commack got access to Hunt's Snapchat account, but said they couldn’t find that picture. They did find a selfie taken less than two hours before her friends say she was last seen leaving the house.
The duo believe they know who the “bootlegger” is and met him while he was using a false name. He broke off contact after they confronted him about his identity.
Savage said the friends told her the police didn’t fully interview them until more than three months after she went missing.
“That's the most critical piece, talking to the last people that she was with. They didn't do that. It's so insane to me,” Savage said. “People feel the need to investigate on their own, because if we don't, we're just in a hope-and-prayer that they are. If we don't, APD won't do it. You know what I mean?”
APD Chief Sean Case said in an interview Monday that investigators interviewed the friends earlier, then called them in for more questions, but said because it was an ongoing investigation he couldn't provide specific details.
The house Hunt went missing from had a security camera over the door. Its residents told Alaska’s News Source it wasn’t recording the night Hunt went missing, but also that the police didn’t ask about it.
Commack said she’s encountered this in other cases.
“Why wasn't it urgent enough in the beginning, and you only start hearing three months later, when it's too late,” Commack said. “They work under this assumption that this person's going to show up. But what happens when they don't?”
Chief Case said in general when someone is reported missing, the department don’t automatically treat it like a crime. He said it isn’t illegal to be missing and that limits what his investigators can do. For example, Case said even when someone’s missing and detectives think something is off, search warrants aren't a given.
“We have missing cases on a regular basis where the detectives clearly have a concern based on the information that they have, and they will go apply for search warrants, and the judge denies them. That's a hard bar to hit,” Case said.
Case said he can’t share if investigators suspect foul play.
“But what I can say is Kelly's story is a very compelling story from start to finish. You know, when you look at her story, we struggle with wanting to tell that story and not wanting to tell the story at the same time. And I think it's really important that those that advocate for MMIP understand that we are really struggling with that,” he said.
Case said APD has canine and volunteer search parties at their disposal. APD spokesperson Regina Romero said in a follow up email that canines weren’t used when Hunt went missing because search dogs are typically used when the scent is still fresh. Four days had passed by the time Hunt was reported missing. She did not respond to KNOM’s question if a volunteer search party was used.
For weeks leading up to the discovery of Hunt’s body, Savage and Commack called out APD on Facebook, urging them to do more for Hunt and other MMIP cases. Commack said this also makes her feel unsafe.
“So that's what it's like to be a Native woman in Alaska. You're scared of law enforcement. You're scared of murderers. You're scared of men,” Commack said. “Like, if I go missing or murdered, I'm the one that talks about it in the state of Alaska, like, who's gonna talk about me? It's just like constant fear.”
A 2016 study published by the U.S Department of the Interior found that Native women living on reservations were murdered at 10 times the rate of the national average. According to the same study, only about 2% of missing persons cases reported to the U.S Department of the Interior were logged in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a national database. Today, 329 Alaska Native people are logged as missing from the state.
What happened to Kelly Hunt?
A few hours after the remembrance ceremony, Commack learned an unidentified body was found a few blocks from where Hunt was staying, and she went.
Over a video call with KNOM, she described the wooded area.
“I'm in the neighbor's yard right now, and she said that it was full of snow this winter,” Commack said. “It's just like an empty ravine. It's a ditch, like a huge ditch."
Commack came to identify Hunt herself. From a high vantage point, she watched the investigators process it like a crime scene, collecting evidence and preparing the body for transport.
While Commack didn't know for sure, she felt fairly certain it was Hunt. Authorities publicly confirmed it five days later.
She said it would partially be a relief. Having a body, she hoped, would give APD grounds to pursue this as a criminal case and get justice for Hunt and her family.
“Before, they were just like, ‘you know, she's an adult, it's not illegal to be missing,” but now they can't say that because, if that's her, she's dead,” Commack said. “It's a relief for the family to, first of all, to not wonder where she is anymore, because that's almost justice enough. But then the family's gonna pivot to what happened to her.”
Now, the crime scene unit is long gone. There’s a growing tribute of flowers, crosses, and photos of Hunt by the side of the road.
Commack and Savage said this isn't the end for Hunt's case. Savage said the work is all-consuming and exhausting, but she can't put it down.
“I wake up, and it's the first thing I think of and the last thing I think of at night. You don't want to put it down, because I know God put her on my heart for a reason, and at the same time, it's like, who am I becoming again?” Savage said. “My poor husband, he's like, ‘When are you gonna come back to reality?’ I may never come back.”
For the Indigenous community, advocates say this is a reality all too familiar in Alaska.
An autopsy and official cause of death are pending from the state medical examiner. No arrests have been made.
Commack and Savage said they will keep advocating and investigating until the case is closed and can answer the question, 'What happened to Kelly Hunt?'
